


Ideal Reader

by atria



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atria/pseuds/atria
Summary: What happened at the Fuji family home after the St. Rudolph's match. A story about, among other things, Fuji relentlessly forgetting Mizuki. Pre-Fujicest.
Relationships: Fuji Shuusuke/Fuji Yuuta
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Ideal Reader

I must’ve had a policy of some kind for going to see my brother. Smile at him, don’t smile; tease him, leave him be. But the fact is that when I saw him again I forgot all of it, I was so happy. 

After the match, he followed me home for dinner. He wanted to come before I said pumpkin curry, or that Ma was asking for him. He dragged his feet about it and made eyes at his team,  _ I say yes, so he says no no no... _ But Yuuta, I knew. I could tell you were trying so hard to look like you were still angry with me because you weren’t anymore, not really. It made you younger than you were, more like eleven, ten, nine. I wanted to keep you in my pocket.

We walked home instead of taking the bus. Yuuta wasn’t himself around people at that age; he could really behave like one of those hamfisted, self-important boys we’d dreaded since daycare. I thought for the whole year that to him I’d become “people”. But when we were apart from the rest of the world, he started to relax, miming the little rebellions of life in a boys’ dorm— climbing onto the ceiling fan, sneaking a fishing rod to the koi pond. 

Yuuta had always wanted a part in boys’ things, but he played the pranks that seemed more about whimsy than shame. And he spoke so earnestly, happy to be talking unbridled and also happy in his new friends, his separate life. He wasn’t trying to hurt or best me. Yet it made me understand why I might want to injure, to compete.

“Bro?” he said, apparently not for the first time. “I  _ said _ , I put the fish back in the pond.” He glared at me, a little anxious. 

He really believed that I cherished life that much, that I would get upset with him for hurting a fish.

* 

The first thing Yumiko said to us when she opened the door was “go smell better”. The rare times Yuuta came home these days she’d be that way, all but stick out her tongue. Supposedly it was the sort of thing she read to me from her psych textbooks, about habit loops and positive reinforcement; she thought being nice to Yuuta when he was being a brat would encourage him. 

It was clear from personal experience that this was true. But it was also clear that Yuuta wasn’t a white rat or a bonobo, he could retort or try to retort and stop short with a gargle in his mouth, he could be hurt in his particular way.

We trailed into our old room and I tossed Yuuta a change of clothes, both his old things. I turned around first because I thought he might like me to. But I didn’t like him to see my back, to be watched where I couldn’t watch him.

There was the sound of ripping fabric. “It doesn’t fit,” he said, belatedly. 

I turned to see his sides had strained a hole in the shirt near the hem, where he was broad now. His hair was in the collar, the sleeves flapped at his ears. 

“Ah, I must have my camera around here somewhere,” I said because I couldn’t help saying it.

“BRO!” he complained, making a complicated shimmy. It transpired that he was trying to get me in the face with his bunny sleeves. 

It was fun to sit on the bed and watch for a while, and I really did think of breaking out the camera. But eventually Yumiko yelled for us to come out, and I sat up to put my hand on his back. 

“Bend over,” I said. He tensed for a bit as though biding time to attack, but then he went obediently. The shirt wrenched a little around his neck, and it was foul. The whole stench of the day harboured close to the body, strong, sour, a little moist, but the moment I flinched from it I was sniffing again, trying to confirm its notes, my disgust. 

And then it became something else entirely.

He was quite still over the bed, half a downward dog. “Bro, what are you thinking,” he said, but I thought his breath stopped a little in his ribs, his voice a little strained. My hands were partly on his skin, warm and smooth and pungent. 

I gave the sleeves a vicious yank and it came off, a button popping. I was still standing there like a vegetable when he reached around me for the closet for an old sleep shirt that fit. His hands were a stranger’s now, large and red.

“You’re not even sweating,” he complained when he was safely out the door. 

I was still in there, afraid of myself.

*

I don’t remember being at dinner. Sitting in that chair, forking the pickles. What with everyone playing their best parts for Yuuta— Yumiko the mature sister, ma the sympathetic barely-older-than-you sister, dad the officious family man— no one minded my temporary lapse. 

Surely I was trying to be normal, to hide. But that any attempt I made would have been surface, disingenuous. Yuuta, I wanted you to know and I didn’t want you to know. I felt so transformed and evicted from myself, so despicable and yet so whole, a long path of secret impulses made coherent. It needed to be seen. You didn’t know everything about me, but you were the only one who could even guess. My ideal and only reader.

I knew from the way you didn’t complain when I walked you to the front door that you wanted to settle something with me.

You scratched your head and looked confused, how you always looked when you were feeling something strongly. “Thanks, bro. For Mizuki-san.” 

You'd saved up these words like coins. 

My heart pounded and pounded and pounded. I made myself put out my hand and lay it on top of your hand like on a sea creature, a curious rock. 

“Saa, who’s that?” 

*

Relatives always said I was more like a second daughter, and depending on the way they said it I would hate it or like it. But at a certain age the thought must have begun to take on a new shape. I thought of being a sister, a girl sibling. One boy and one girl. That would have been one step closer, wouldn’t it?


End file.
